Shipping is still in North-East’s blood

Sep 18 2007 By Chris Hilton and Eamon Moloney

NEWCASTLE’S marine sector is booming. The industrial and commercial foundations of the North-East were built on shipbuilding and the coal trade.

Both these industries are almost dead, but for more than 100 years Newcastle has also been a centre of excellence for marine insurance and marine law – and these sectors are thriving today.

Still the home of Stephenson Clarke, the oldest British shipping company, dating back to 1730, and Gillie and Blair, a family-run ship-owning company with a long and distinguished track record, the region continues to attract leading ship owners and managers.

Major international tanker owner OSG, Maersk-Moller, the world’s largest ship owner and Hanseatic, the Cyprus-based shipping company, are all part of Newcastle’s resurgent Quayside.

First and foremost, these world-class ship managers come to the region because it offers the core skills they need, with Europe’s largest nautical training college at South Shields and the UK’s leading naval architecture and marine engineering faculty at Newcastle University.

Just last month, a new company, the Marine Design Centre, opened its doors in the heart of Newcastle to perform design work for the commercial shipping, oil and gas and defence industries.

The North-East is developing a marine hub which in the full service it can offer challenges the best in Europe and in the USA.

Marine insurance and marine law are inextricably linked, both to each other and to ship management, and the region has always offered both of these specialist service industries.

The North-East is home to three of the world’s leading mutual marine insurers. The North of England P&I Association on Newcastle’s Quayside provides liability and legal costs insurance to more than 65 million tonnes of shipping.

Its sister company, Marine Shipping Mutual Insurance, provides hull and machinery (ie property) insurance to a select fleet and recently moved to Durham. Sunderland Marine specialises in insuring all the risks associated with the world’s largest fishing fleets.

Newcastle is also home to three firms of specialist marine-law solicitors, all of which originate in the Sunderland practice of Botterell Roche & Temperley, founded in the 1860s.

The Newcastle office became part of Eversheds in 1989. From 1993, the Eversheds shipping team divided and sub-divided into four firms, two of which remerged this month, so that the present practices are Eversheds, Mills & Co and Marine Solutions.

These firms are at the forefront of developments in marine law and are tackling the issues facing shipping practitioners in the UK and across the world. For instance, Eversheds and Mills & Co are both involved in the much publicised Napoli casualty in the English Channel.

In 2003, a legal team based in the North-East was instructed to represent owners and their insurers after the grounding of the oil tanker Tasman Spirit at Karachi. This was the first time such a significant and prominent casualty – which involved more than 35 legal actions in eight countries and with indemnity claims exceeding $8.75bn – was handled outside the City of London.

Eversheds earned international recognition for its involvement in 2005, when named Shipping Lawyers of the Year.